I dunno, I've followed this saga on and off for years, I'm pretty familiar with the case. But maybe there are other people, new to Perl, who don't know what this is all about. Do you have a link to a web page that explains the issue?

Maybe if people knew the whole story, they would be less inclined to downvote you on this...

I have lived for the past
eight years in the hope that the legal system was truly a justice
system, but that hope has now faded, and I'm older and wiser, but
permanently battle-scarred.

Chin up, shoulders back. The legal system just is. I did a single year of law once upon a once upon before I saw the light. I was continuously chastised for my idiotic notions of justice - this was law afterall - what did justice have to do with it? The two may have been related at some time in the dim and distant past but....

The sun will rise tomorrow and it will be a new day. With that thought compliments of the season to you.

That is very sad news indeed. I have always thought - rather na´vely I guess - that courts would listen to facts and decide according to them. Your case just proves once more that this obviously is not the case. It seems that justice the longer the more becomes a question of who has more money, power and influence.

I wish you a quiet, merry Christmas despite all this, and all the Best for the new year.

Randal, I can't believe it! I didn't hear about your case until
this moment and it now strikes me so hard, I simply fail
to understand how one could cope with all this. I should
comment your 'hacker' spirit! I'm still not 100% aware of
the circumstances of your case; however, from what I have
been able to dig up on the web, I say that laws (especially
those of Oregon state) are "bull shit!". I don't trust
COPS now either. I never trusted the government. To
produce such llama laws is shameful.

I'd like to learn more about what _exactly_ happened.. God knows,
it might help me never get in the same pile of dirt =/.

Randal, you are the _MAN_! I wish you good luck in
ur career and hopefully some positive resolution in this case.

"There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." -- Confession of Faith

The problem with distributed cracking is that it makes a lot of noise. Remember the Randal Schwartz case? Mr. Schwartz probably would never have been discovered if he were not distributing the CPU load. Another system administrator noticed the heavy processor power being eaten. (He also noted that one process had been running for more than a day.) Distributed cracking really isn't viable for a cracker unless he is the administrator of a site or he has a net work at home...

Unfortunately it doesn't appear the publicity helped to reverse Intel's or the justice department's position. Hopefully other people did learn something from the case though, I know I did.

It's also incorrect. I was not "distributing the CPU load". I was using the shared server that we had just installed but not yet deployed for its designated task, partially as a test of the new server, and partially as a test of the new Crack version which I had not used.
And it was the only server on which I was running crack. There's no "distributing" there.

While I appreciate that my case has been written up in at least half a dozen books, I do wish some of them had come to me for a bit of fact-checking first.

It's why I didn't contribute more to the Perl Institute, or even the current Damian and crew funding.

Whatever his other felonies, we certainly can't convict Randal on this count! Last year he individually donated over $5,000 -- 10% of my entire salary funding. In fact, his was the third largest single donation overall.

I expected no less than to be downvoted for my node...and it happened of course. However I still feel that if you posted a node explaining what happened and how we could learn from it, I would have no problem at all with it, in fact, I'd be happy to see it.

What you did however was telling us something quite unrelated to Perl, being the court decision. People would learn from your story if you explained the whole thing, which I think is no longer nessecary because I think the whole Perl world knows about it already

Again, I do symphathize with you and I think the State of Oregon is being rediculous, but like I said on the CB yesterday: if anyone else, an unfamous monk, would have posted this, it would most definately be reaped because the content of the node is not related to Perl.

But that's my final word about it. I expect you will respond to this one, and if I feel the urge to respond again, I'll /msg you.

You'd better downvote me too, because I agree that your
courtroom drama is not relevant to the Monastery. Your
being "world famous in Poland"(1) isn't reason enough to
make your major life events points for public discussion.

When Larry starts posting his stock portfolio, we'll
talk. Until then, the Monastery is about Perl, not about
people who happen to be known to each other by means of Perl.

(1) "To Be Or Not To Be"; I've only seen the Mel Brooks version,
so I don't know if the Henny Youngman version originated that line.

As a sysadmin who uses perl, I must respectfully disagree. I find the fact that computer crimes laws could be used against me for doing my job extremely disturbing. I find the legal system's lack of comprehension of the issues in this case even more disturbing.

Professional practices are regularly discussed in this space. Some of the nodes discussing them are among the highest rated in the monastery. IMO, this post tells me more about the place where my practices come up against the U.S. legal system.
It's unfortunate it didn't meet your criteria, it certainly met mine.

As a sysadmin who uses perl, I must respectfully disagree. I find the
fact that computer crimes laws could be used against me for doing my
job extremely disturbing.

Have you actually read any of the documents surrounding this case?
Computer crime laws were not used against Randal for doing his job.
That is simply plain false and I am disappointed that Randal isn't
doing a better job trying to clear up that misconception. In no way
was running crack on password files part of his job description at
Intel at the time. Installing programs to subvert Intel's security
policies regarding machine access was also clearly outside the realm
of any of his stated duties, and was an activity which he admitted
to having been repeatedy told by superiors to cease.

If you wish to persist in your belief that Randal was busted for
doing his job, that's your affair. Please do not continue to spread
such unsupported allegations here. Please do show us how computer
crime laws were used against Randal for doing his job! There is a
great deal of stuff floating around claiming that Randal was
blindsided by laws that made his job-related activities illegal. The
activities he engaged in that led to the charges and convictions
against him were simply not part of his job. I'd feel much more
sympathy for the man if he would more publicly assert the fact that
he did break the law, that he was operating well outside of his then
current job description when he did so, and that he had been warned
on more than one occassion by superiors to doing some of things he
was eventually charged for.

Yes I think there were certain miscarriages of justice involved. They
just aren't the miscarriages you and many others seem more than
willing to believe.

As I mentioned in the chatterbox... it's a lesson to others in the community who might not realise that the neat things they are doing with computers can be treated as seriously as mugging little old ladies. In fact, the penalties can be much higher.

As such, they story is relevant to most people here (regardless of your geographical local). We should be telling people about this very vocally - the same way we have many posts about using CGI or dot-star. Stories like merlyn's and Mitnick's should be required knowledge for any wanna-be coder.

If this sounds overdone, try sending Kevin Mitnick an email and get his opinion on the issue. Oh wait... you can't. We should be taking this as seriously as the rest of the world does, and they take it very seriously.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.